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Monday, April 4, 2011

The violent madness that engulfs Egyptian and Algerian footballing relations exploded yet again, this time during Saturday's African Champions League match between Egpyt's Zamalek and Tunisia's Club Africain. With Zamalek leading 2-1 in the second leg but still down 5-4 on aggregate, they had a vital late goal disallowed after being ruled offside. The home fans decided to blame the match's Algerian referee and in stoppage time, hundreds of them stormed the pitch.

The match was abandoned as the officials fled the scene and the crazies on the pitch threw stones, lit flares and attacked both the players and each other.

From Reuters:

An Egyptian official in the ministry of health said nine people were injured in the incident, according to the state news agency MENA. He did not give their nationalities.

The incident revived the soccer tension between Egypt and Algeria of the recent past.

Algeria and Egypt had a diplomatic row late in 2009 over an ill-tempered qualification match for the World Cup.

Both sides traded accusations about crowd violence and intimidation and Cairo withdrew its ambassador from Algiers.

Africain will likely be awarded the victory once this mess is sorted out and Zamalek should be in for some kind of sanctions against them (key word there being "should"). Also, note how the video above ends with a creepy horror movie type cut out, making it just that much more disturbing. We don't know for sure, but there's a good chance that's when Godzilla attacked.

UPDATE: Egypt prime minister Essam Sharaf has apologized to Tunisia, the Africain players and the Algerian referee for what he described as "an act of thuggery" at Cairo Stadium. He has ordered the interior ministry to launch an investigation and called for the African Champions League to be suspended.